For the record, the CCME halt was at the request of the company, not by the exchange. This is done for positive or negative news that has potential to dramatically affect stock price if leaked. I'm interested to see which one it is. Unlike you, I'm not willing to assume that it is bad news.

I fell for the XFML (now XSEL) scam back in 2007 and lost a little money and I made some bad green thumbs on Chinese RTO stocks last summer. I put two and two together, saw that the auditors are doing a terrible job, and realized -- hey -- there's tons of fraud in this area. The better the numbers look, the more likely something has gone wrong.

We all get fooled occasionally. I've taken more than my fair share of lumps. What separates the good investors from the bad is that the good figure out they messed up and learn from it whereas the bad blame the company, the short sellers, the journalists or whoever exposes one fraud and then buy into the next too-good-to-be-true story.